


Kathy's Song

by steph7of7



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 18:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4845413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steph7of7/pseuds/steph7of7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, traumatic events bonded people together.  Kathy knew this.  Sometimes, fate had a cruel way of bonding two people who would have never chosen to be so.  Such was the case with Kathy Stabler and Olivia Benson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in 2009, and it follows season (whatever that season was) of the show. (Season 9? 10? 8?) I found it and thought, hey, this story holds up. So I'm posting it here.
> 
> ***
> 
> There are so many reasons for nobody to read this story. Where do I begin?
> 
> 1\. Elliot and Olivia will not get it on.  
> 2\. Kathy is featured prominently, in a sympathetic manner.  
> 3\. It's a WIP, and my summer vacation is almost over. Sure, it's short (eight chapters, I'm planning on) and outlined...but still. If this ain't done in two weeks, don't you be expecting anything before Christmas. 
> 
> In fact, there's really only one thing to recommend this story: It is not--I repeat--NOT songfic. I just couldn't resist the title. And the lyrics--which may or may not have anything to do with the fic--I make no promises--are haunting and plaintive:
> 
> I stand alone without beliefs  
> The only truth I know is you
> 
> And without further ado: Kathy's Song.

Sometimes, traumatic events bonded people together. Kathy knew this. Sometimes, fate had a cruel way of bonding two people who would have never chosen to be so. Such was the case with Kathy Stabler and Olivia Benson. 

Fate loves irony. 

So, after the car wreck that resulted in Eli's premature birth and almost resulted in Kathy's premature death, Kathy felt that she had a connection with Olivia. Not quite a relationship, but maybe just a starting point. They both fought like hell for the same thing that day, and it bonded them. It did. It had to. 

Finally, after nine years, the two of them had something in common other than Elliot. (Having Elliot in common was not exactly conducive to a friendship between the women, anyway. He was more of a dividing point.)

But two weeks after Eli was born marked two weeks since Kathy had seen Olivia, so she told Elliot to invite his partner over for dinner. 

"You know she'll never come," he told her.

"There's no harm in asking. Besides, she'll want to see Eli." She knew this, and not just because a mother always thinks the world of her baby. Olivia had helped give birth to Eli--she'd want to know how he was doing. She'd want to hold him. 

"Fine. I'll ask."

 

When he came home that evening, Kathy asked him right away. "What'd she say?"

"What?"

"Olivia! What'd she say?" Off Elliot's puzzled expression, she continued, "Did you remember to ask her to dinner?"

"Oh. Yeah, honey. She said maybe some other time."

And that's when Kathy realized her mistake. She should not have made Elliot the messenger. 

 

The next morning, she called Olivia directly. 

"Benson."

"Olivia? Hi, this is Kathy."

"Hey." This was followed by a puzzled silence. Maybe Olivia was remembering the last time Kathy had called her--the time she wanted Elliot to sign the divorce papers. 

For being virtual strangers, they were strangely intertwined. 

Kathy didn't let the silence stretch. "I'm sorry that I told Elliot to invite you to dinner. I should have done it myself. It would mean a lot to me if you could come have dinner with us."

"Oh! ...Uh--I'm...sorry, I didn't expect you to say that. Um, when?"

"Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Whichever is convenient. I know the job is hard to work around. If you could just let me know the day before, I'd appreciate it." 

"Kathy, I don't know. I'm catching this weekend, so maybe some other time?"

Kathy tried to keep from sounding too disappointed. She knew what that meant. "Sure. Some other time, then."

 

Olivia hung up her phone and looked across her desk toward Elliot. "What was that about?" he asked. 

"That was your wife, asking me to dinner."

His eyebrows lifted. "Sounds like she means business."

"You could have warned me."

"Don't look at me, I didn't know she was going to do that."

She artfully changed the subject. "You get anything on the Gifford case?"

He artfully ignored her. "Are you really catching this weekend?"

She frowned at him, exasperated. "Yes. Tell me what you know about the Gifford case."

And that was that. 

 

Olivia viewed the car wreck a bit differently. She didn't like relying on anybody, ever, for anything, so when Kathy was reduced to begging ("Don't leave me Olivia!"--it still rang in Olivia's ears and it probably rang in Kathy's ears, too, probably to Kathy's shame), Olivia thought that Kathy probably needed some space to recover. 

All those probablies, and now it seemed that Olivia had probably gotten something wrong along the way. 

So, maybe Kathy was okay with needing other people. Maybe that was one more thing the two women didn't have in common. 

Maybe that was okay. Maybe she'd say yes if asked again.

Maybe not.

Maybe Olivia couldn't get over the fact that this was Kathy. 

 

"Is it weird," she asked Casey one night at the bar, "if a woman who once accused her husband of cheating with you wants to be your friend years later? What does that even mean?"

Casey just shrugged. "People do sometimes change their minds," she said. 

Olivia scowled. 

"What?" Casey asked. 

"It's not only that she accused me of cheating..." Olivia's voice drifted off. She shrugged and drank her beer.

Casey got right to the point. "Just to be sure, we are talking about Kathy, right?" 

Olivia looked at the mirrored wall behind the bar, studying Casey in the reflection. "I guess that's obvious, huh." 

Casey rolled her eyes. "Well, what is it? Spill." 

"Well, when Kathy and Elliot were separated, she actually came to me and asked me to get him to sign the divorce papers." 

Casey lifted her eyebrows. "Wow. Well, it is a fucked-up world we live in, my friend." 

Olivia snorted. "Tell me about it." 

"Did you? Cheat?" She asked the question quickly, and immediately broke out with a shit-eating grin. 

Olivia glared at her. "I don't even know how to respond to that." 

Casey's mouth opened slightly and her eyes widened. "With the truth!" She meant her question to be flippant--a way to loosen the mood--but Olivia was dodging it. "Oh my God! Did you! You did!" She leaned back on her barstool. "It would explain so much."

"Casey...first of all, if Elliot and I had slept together, it would have been him cheating, not me. Second of all, what the holy fuck does it even matter?"

Casey could not believe the turn of this conversation. She couldn't believe she'd never asked this question before. "Well...I would know who to feel more sorry for in this sordid tale."

"Casey, I have never had sex with Elliot." But Olivia met her eyes only briefly. 

"But you did mess around."

Olivia very deliberately drained her beer, then looked Casey dead in the eyes. "No. Fuck you. And we're done." She fished a ten out of her coat pocket, tossed it on the bar, and left. 

Casey wasn't worried. True, Olivia did not let many people in, and she got pissed off when anybody pried in her business. But she didn't hold grudges. And now Casey was left to imagine Olivia and Elliot's (possibly) lustful past.


	2. Ancient History

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone else ever noticed how they kind of play fast and loose with the ages of these guys? So I'm just spitballing when it comes to that, but I think mostly it works out okay.

Olivia had lied to Casey.

Olivia and Elliot had messed around, but it was ancient history. Very early in their partnership, a fluke of a moment, alone in the locker room late at night. She couldn't even remember what case they were working. One minute her hand was on Elliot's shoulder in comfort, and literally--honestly--the next thing she remembered, they were kissing each other. It was not at all tender. They kissed the way some people fight: furiously and with everything they had. 

She could not remember how it started or who started it. Just...hands and teeth and tongue, and when Elliot's hand touched the skin at her waist--they both froze. Elliot pulled his head back slightly and they both stared each other while trying to breathe normally. 

That moment burned itself in her mind--she was pushed back against the lockers, one leg drawn up around Elliot. One of her hands cupped his ass while the other one gripped the back of his neck. One of his hands covered her breast, and the other one just grazed the skin of her waist. Slowly they returned to themselves, extricated themselves. Elliot said, "Uh..." and Olivia replied, "Yeah." And then they both said, "Sorry." They never broke eye contact. Neither one smiled. Then Olivia nodded and left Elliot alone in the locker room. 

(She had so many questions about what happened. When did Elliot push her against the lockers? When did her leg come into play? She wondered if it was the same for Elliot. Surely it was--it had been madness.)

It was excusable--their cases were high stress, high emotion, low sleep. And he was a man and she was a woman and anyone can make one mistake. They both knew that two mistakes would kill their partnership. 

And even then, even in the beginning of it all, they both valued their partnership highly.

They never spoke about it--not directly, anyway. Because before two weeks had gone by, Olivia had sex with Brian Cassidy by accident. She tried to hold herself together during the daylight hours and not think about it too much, because in the moments when she remembered, she felt like a complete screw-up. (Making out with her married partner in the locker room, then fucking a different coworker with no preamble? She had to be the biggest SVU burn-out cliché in the book.) She had started to think that she couldn't handle the job--the pressure was obviously making her crack. 

But then, while standing in the same place where they had shared their own ill-advised encounter, Elliot asked her how long she'd been sleeping with Cassidy. It was like a bad dream--how had he known? She had been faking her way through the day, but she thought she'd been doing a pretty good job of it. It killed her that Elliot could tell. 

She said, "I didn't mean for this to...I mean, I guess you never do, but I--" And she had to roll her eyes at herself. 

But he didn't judge her, just gave her advice on how to let Cassidy down. 

And then with a casual shrug, he said, "It happens." 

"Really." It was somewhere between a question and a statement.

He agreed. "Really."

In the eight years that followed, Olivia never had another one-night stand and she never shared another kiss with a married man. And she and Elliot never had another conversation that angled toward their own moment of indiscretion. 

Thus ended Olivia's brief lust for Elliot, and thus began a much more complicated process. A long, slow, ugly process that took years. And at the end of it, she woke up one day and realized that she loved Elliot more than anyone she'd ever known. 

It worried Olivia--trying to make friends with Kathy. She thought Kathy would forgive them the kiss. It was just once, years ago, and nothing physical had happened since. 

But the emotional entanglement was maybe--probably--more catastrophic. Because Olivia knew that Elliot reciprocated. 

They were partners, after all. 

 

But Kathy knew--or suspected--all this and more. When she left Elliot, she meant it. She didn't ever mean to go back. But she never stopped loving him, either.

Divorced life had been a mixed bag for her. For example, she missed her in-laws. Elliot's brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives were a lot of fun when they got together, and now she felt unwelcome with them. Shortly after the separation, Kathy showed up to a birthday party with all the kids in tow--Elliot was working so he wasn't there--and everything was weird. Certainly no one was rude, or even impolite. Everything was just a little too civil. The next time the Stabler clan got together, the kids went alone. Kathy stayed at home, drinking a mimosa and looking through old pictures. 

It's not that she cursed the world for being unfair; she knew she couldn't have her cake and eat it too. 

But still. It had stung.

And there were good things about being single. She joined an athletic club, started going to a spinning class. She met a man there--an attractive, sweet, empty-headed oaf named Chad. They went out on several dates; they even made love a few times. The sex was completely new for Kathy--he was only her second ever sexual partner, and he was nothing like Elliot. It was nothing like Elliot. It was simple and meaningless. 

Meaningless sex had its benefits, but it didn't exactly fit in with the lifestyle of a divorced mother of four. So she stopped seeing Chad. They didn't do anything major like breaking up--they were never serious enough to require such a formal process. 

It was three months later that Elliot told her he wanted to get back together. She didn't know what to do. Elliot was familiar, like an old pair of shoes. And he was a good man and he hadn't been a ... terrible husband. 

She wasn't sure those were good enough reasons to get back together. 

Unfortunately, she was sure those were good enough reasons to fall back into bed with him. And that created a good enough reason to get back together. 

One thing she knew for sure: sex with Elliot was never simple or meaningless.

She went back to him with open eyes. So what if Elliot loved another woman--that woman was not his wife. Kathy was his wife. And always would be. Elliot was as loyal, and even if he had slept with Olivia, Kathy refused to take it personally. Elliot might have sex with Olivia, but their relationship was not about sex. Elliot might love Olivia, but their relationship was not about love. 

These thoughts comforted Kathy, probably more than they should. Because Elliot chose Kathy, and she was sure everything would be okay. Making babies with Elliot Stabler was one thing the two of them understood and did well. 

 

Kathy may have found her Zen early in her pregnancy, but Elliot was so embarrassed. He couldn't bear the thought of--for example--telling her parents that he'd knocked up Kathy--out of wedlock--for the second time in their lives. It was easier the first time--at least then they were young and had the excuse. A lot of 20-year-olds knock up their 18-year-old girlfriends. How many 44-year-olds knock up their 42-year-old ex-wives? It was like all those years of living they had done in the meantime had taught him nothing.

Meanwhile, Olivia had been suspended and he couldn't talk about his issues with Fin or--God forbid--Munch. 

So he called Olivia late one night, while he was alone on a stakeout and she was undoubtedly already in bed, but he didn't care. He was crawling out of his own skin and he had to talk to someone about it. He told her, "Liv, I just feel so stupid about all this."

Olivia replied, "It happens."

"It happens?"

He could feel her shrugging. "Yeah."

"Liv, grown men do not knock up their ex-wives."

"Well, I don't know what to tell you, because I can think of at least one example off the top of my head." 

She meant for the teasing to be light, but from his silence she could tell that he wasn't taking it that way. So she changed tack. "Look, El, you told me that once, and it helped me a lot."

"Told you what?"

"That it happens."

"And that helped you...?"

"Remember when I had sex with Cassidy, and it was a mistake? And it was right after you and I had our little thing, whatever it was, and I...just...really wanted to prove myself to the squad--that I was good enough--but also...I just wanted sex to be normal. I mean--God, our job is fucked up, and sex is....deviant and horrible and a weapon and a...a...punishment. And--I just wanted to have normal sex like a normal person. And God, I was just screwing everything up. And you told me that it happens. And I realized that I was normal, and screwing up is what normal people do. And we have fucked up jobs and it fucks up our sex lives, and that's normal and it happens.

"So, yeah. You screwed up, you wanted normal sex, and now you're dealing with the consequences. It happens."

He stayed quiet for a moment, then said, "You know, I thought you were cracking up back then."

"Yeah, well. I kinda did, too."

"I didn't want to have to break in another partner. I saw potential in you." 

"My, how the tables have turned."

Elliot smiled. Talking with Olivia always helped him.

 

And then after the car wreck, Kathy just wanted to have a nice dinner together. Hadn't they all at least earned a friendship? She hoped their histories weren't too entangled.


	3. Dinner

Two weeks after they'd fought, Casey and Olivia were back at the same bar, nursing the same drinks. Olivia said, "Kathy's still asking me over for dinner." 

Casey shrugged. "Go."

"What?"

"Go! What could it hurt? You saved her life, and her baby's. Go. Enjoy a homemade casserole. Eat some ice cream for dessert. Smile, make nice, and stop making such a big fucking deal about it." 

Olivia didn't respond, so Casey kept on. "It's just one damn night, anyway. One meal."

"Fine. You're right. I'll go."

"Good. I mean, it's not like you slept with the woman's husband."

There was a moment when Casey thought the joke was a little too soon, but then Olivia snorted. "Case, you are a right bitch sometimes." 

 

The next day, Olivia called Kathy to tell her that she was free for dinner that weekend. Kathy sounded delighted. 

"Okay! Great! I know Eli will be glad to see you!"

After Kathy hung up, Olivia couldn't help but smile. 

 

Later on, when they were both at their desks, Olivia told Elliot, "So I guess I'm having dinner at your house on Friday."

He looked up, confused. "What?"

"This Friday. Dinner at your house."

"You're coming?"

"Yeah."

He frowned at her and said nothing. 

Sometimes, Elliot's mere existence pissed her off. This was one of those times. She ignored him and turned her attention to the file in front of her. 

It was a few minutes before they spoke again, and it was Elliot who broke the silence. "Liv, Kathy means well. And for some reason, she likes you. But I just don't think you have much in common."

"Well then, I guess this will be an uncomfortable experience for all of us." Olivia stood up abruptly and walked away from Elliot, ostensibly to get more coffee. In that moment, she resolved to get along with Kathy, if just to spite Elliot. 

She knew she wouldn't stay mad at him; whatever he said and however he said it, he meant well. But for this moment, she just wanted to hate him. ('For some reason, she likes you.' She shook her head at the coffeemaker.)

Sometimes, she hated that Elliot could only think of her as a cop. Not as a regular person, and certainly not as a woman. 

(For his part, Elliot wasn't sure what he'd said that clearly made Olivia so angry with him. He was only stating the facts.)

 

When Elliot got home that night, he tried to warn Kathy. "Honey, I just don't think this is going to go well."

"Elliot...it's dinner. Tell you what: if we all manage to not get poisoned, let's call the evening successful. What do you say?"

"Baby, just listen to me! I'm worried that you're building this up that you and Olivia are going to be great friends, and I just don't think it's going to happen." 

"Why? Because our passionate love for you is going to come between us?"

Occasionally, Elliot knew when to keep quiet. He let the comment slide, but still tried to convey his main point. "You two are just too different. You come from different worlds. That's all I'm saying." 

"I think we can manage one dinner together."

"Sure. Sure. But just...don't look for anything more than that."

 

So the big night came. Olivia showed up right when she was expected, and Kathy wasted no time in passing Eli off to her. Olivia couldn't believe how much he'd grown already. "Yeah, he's already a month old," Kathy told her. 

When they sat down to dinner--Kathy, Elliot, Olivia, Kathleen, and the twins--Lizzie took Eli and laid him down in a playpen in the corner. 

Elliot had warned Kathy not to ask any personal questions, but she didn't see any harm in small talk. "So, Olivia! I feel like I know you, but I don't know anything about you. Tell me about yourself. What about your family? Where are you from?"

Olivia took a deep breath and frowned. The situation was surreal. Unreal. Nine years they had known each other--talk about intimate strangers. Olivia shot Elliot a questioning glance, but he was extremely interested in his own plate at the moment. Scrutinizing his peas. 

Olivia was still determined to make this pleasant. "I'm from Manhattan. ...And I have a brother out in Jersey."

"Oh! Are you two close?"

"Uhhh, not as close as I'd like."

Kathy nodded. "Well, I think we all know how that goes."

Elliot listened to this conversation with amazement. It was like Olivia was dodging bullets. Clearly she had practice. 

After dinner, Elliot offered to clear the table and named Dickie his deputy. Dickie got up from the table so slowly that by the time he stood up, Elliot was already in the kitchen. He looked sadly at his baby brother in the corner. "I can't wait till he's old enough to help whenever Dad gets in one of these moods." Lizzie laughed and Kathleen threw her napkin at him, but the girls didn't move to get up from the table. 

Olivia looked over to the playpen. Eli had been a perfect baby all through the meal, barely fussing at all. She couldn't help herself--she went over and scooped the baby into her arms. Kathy watched as Olivia cradled Eli, and smiled when she bent down to smell his head. 

Without thinking about it, Kathy started talking. "In a few weeks we're going to baptize him. I was wondering--if you'd like--to be his godmother."

Olivia was stunned, but could still think of ten reasons why that wouldn't work. The first reason that reached her mouth was, "I'm not Catholic."

But the girls were already making high-pitched noises of approval, and Kathleen jumped in with her own opinion. "Oh, that doesn't matter! It's just symbolic, you know--just that you'd be his guardian, someone to look out for him. You'd be perfect!" 

"Surely there's someone else..."

Now Lizzie. "My godmother is Aunt Claire, and I never see her. Eli's so lucky!" 

Olivia kept trying to get through to them. "I just don't think that I could. It's not that I'm against your religion or mean any disrespect, but ... I just don't think that I could."

The girls made lower-pitched noises of disappointment. It was Kathy who spoke next. "I don't want this to be weird. If you really don't want to, there's no pressure. I mean--Maureen would love to be Eli's godmother. It's just...I owe you. Everything. And so does Eli. And I just thought this was a way for you to be in his life."

Olivia felt equal parts honored and backed into a corner. "Can I think about it?"

"Sure, sure. And like I said: no pressure."

 

What bothered Olivia was that five short weeks before the invitation to be godmother--one week before Eli had been born--she had interviewed at an adoption agency. In the interview, she had been completely open, upfront, and honest. And so had they when they informed her that her lifestyle was inappropriate for a single mother. 

Elliot had always tried to say that nurture was more important than nature, and there were times when Olivia wanted to believe him. She knew her genes were bad and she was desperately afraid to pass those on, but she still wanted to raise a child. And when the adoption agency informed her that in their expert opinion she was unfit to even nurture another human being, she went home and cried bitterly. 

She didn't often indulge herself like that. 

But now, it seemed that Kathy thought that Olivia was fit to be a godmother--a second mother. She felt Kathy was basing her decision on circumstantial evidence--the adoption agency had her whole casefile in front of them when they reached their conclusion. 

But maybe being Eli's godmother was the universe's way of throwing her a bone. 

And that's why Olivia soon found herself standing in front a priest, taking part in the ritual of Eli's baptism. She had thought that the service would be just a necessary thing--annoying but harmless--but when she stood with Kathy and Elliot and they all placed their hands on Eli, she found herself getting choked up. 

Lizzie had been the designated photographer, and in the pictures that she showed everyone after the Mass, Olivia looked like she'd just eaten something bad. Elliot looked up at her over the camera, his head slightly cocked and his eyes narrowed. 

"Shut up," she told him.


	4. Uncovered

Kathy wasn't sure how much or how little Olivia would insert herself into Eli's life. She had invited Olivia in--and meant it--but she wasn't surprised when they didn't see each other for a while.

The job sapped Olivia's time as much as it did Elliot's. 

Life continued on, more or less normal, until one day when Elliot stopped sleeping.

This wasn't a new thing--there would be an odd case here and there that would get to him, and he'd have a series of restless nights. It was worse when he first transferred to Special Victims--he lost sleep over every case--but after a few months on the job he adjusted. 

Kathy was a light sleeper. She could almost always tell when Elliot was awake.

This new period of sleeplessness started suddenly one night, at 2:00 in the morning. Elliot--who up till then hadn't made any sort of noise that Kathy heard--shouted "No!" and jumped out of bed. Kathy was alert before Elliot was; she could see the confusion in his posture as he stood beside the bed, panting. 

Eli whined in protest, but didn't wake up.

"El?" Kathy asked quietly, mindful of the baby. "Everything okay?"

"He's got her." His voice was rough and his words were mumbled, but she could hear him clearly just the same.

"Who's got who, Elliot?" But he ignored her as he started to look around and feel around, trying to place himself. She thought he was looking for his gun, the way he patted his hip. "It's okay, Elliot. It's okay. It was just a dream."

He looked at her for a long moment. "It was. What part?" 

He was obviously still muddled, so Kathy coaxed him: "El, come back to bed. Everything's okay." 

Slowly, slowly he obeyed her. 

But he didn't stay in bed for long--she could hear him get up and pad downstairs. He didn't come back to bed for the rest of the night. 

The next night, Elliot got out of bed again--not in such a dramatic fashion, but he still went downstairs. Kathy checked the time: 2:18. This time, he did eventually come back to bed--at 4:37--but from the way he kept rolling over, she didn't think he went back to sleep. 

And the next night, and the night after that. 

He started coming home on time--even early on some occasions. Perversely, he was more distant on those days, barely speaking with anyone. Questions about his well-being were met with shrugs and denials. 

Meanwhile, he developed dark circles under his eyes. 

She considered asking Olivia about him--chances were good that she at least knew what Elliot's problem was. But she couldn't think of a time when this was possible--she didn't want Elliot listening in to either side of the conversation. And Elliot was always with one or the other of them. 

And still, he wasn't sleeping.

They fought. Or rather, Kathy fought while Elliot stayed mostly silent--"Elliot, what is the matter with you?" she yelled at him. He shrugged, not meeting her eyes.

He ignored the kids--Kathleen bounded into the kitchen one night with a notice of a scholarship to Hudson. "That's good," Elliot said without inflection. He nodded and took another drink from his beer.

It had been three weeks since Elliot's first nightmare when Kathy gave up and called Olivia in the middle of the day. There was a time for decorum, but Kathy was losing patience. She was also losing more sleep because of Elliot than because of Eli, and enough was enough. It was either this or divorce Elliot again. 

Olivia answered on the second ring: "Benson."

"Olivia, this is Kathy--if Elliot's around, please don't let him know this is me."

"...Okay."

"Is he there?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, fine. I--I'm worried about him. He's acting weird--have you noticed anything...off?" Olivia stayed oddly silent, and Kathy drew a frustrated breath. "I realize it's probably hard to talk with him right there. Do you know what's going on?"

"Uh...I don't know if I can help you." Olivia's voice sounded slightly higher than usual. 

"Are you sure? Are you working a bad case right now? Can you give me anything?"

"No, I'm sorry. I don't think so."

"Is it because he's right there? Could you call me back when you get a moment?"

"Sure, if you want. But I don't think I can help."

"Yeah. Well...thanks, anyway." 

And that was that. She was out of ideas. 

 

She resolved to wait the whole thing out. She just hoped that whatever was going on blew over quickly. But Elliot did not make any progress toward becoming a functioning human being who slept at night. 

Late summer brought oppressive heat and her sister-in-law's birthday. Kathy dropped Eli off with Maureen and drove all the way out to Staten Island for a lunch get-together at a nice restaurant. It was fun to get out with the Stabler women and laugh--it felt like an escape from her home life, which was in a free-fall these days. 

As she left the restaurant and walked out to the car, she almost ran into Olivia, who was coming out of an office building. 

"Olivia! What are you doing way out here?"

For a moment, Olivia looked like a deer caught in headlights, but she pulled herself together. "I just had an appointment--what are you doing here?"

"Lunch date with my sister-in-law. She lives out here and it's her birthday--we were just celebrating at her favorite restaurant. But what about you--an appointment all the way out in Staten Island? What's up?"

Olivia looked off to the side, as if considering something. When she turned back to Kathy, she was decisive. "I'm actually here to see a therapist. I had thought that I wouldn't run into anybody out here. So, please don't tell Elliot that you saw me."

Kathy was surprised by just about everything Olivia had just said. She picked the most surprising thing to address first. "Why don't you want Elliot to know?" 

Olivia squinted her eyes--in a manner that mimicked Elliot--and Kathy backpedaled: "I mean, it's none of my business, and I'm sorry for asking. I'm sorry."

Olivia gave her a perfunctory smile. "It's okay. It's okay. There's just...something at work that I'm having a hard time dealing with. That's all. It's no big deal. I just don't want him to think I can't handle it."

"Oh." And suddenly things started clicking into place. "Oooohh."

For some reason, Olivia looked momentarily horrified. "What?"

"Well, Elliot can't sleep--he's having nightmares and won't talk about it, and here I am, trying to pick your brain when whatever's bothering him is obviously bothering you, too. I'm sorry for prying when I called the other day--I should have thought."

Olivia licked her lips and took several deep breaths while studying Kathy's shoulder. 

Kathy had raised enough kids to know the look of someone who wanted to confess. She gently prodded, "What is it?"

And that's all it took; Olivia started talking. "It's my fault. I took an undercover assignment--I requested it. And Elliot wanted to be my backup, but they already knew he was a cop, so Fin came instead. And...and things went wrong." 

She stopped for a moment. Kathy was about to say something when Olivia shook her head and continued, "It wasn't Fin's fault, and Elliot couldn't have helped even if he had been there--but he blames himself and that's stupid." 

She stopped again. She wasn't crying but only on a technicality--she had tears in her eyes but they weren't willing to fall. She looked at Kathy and smiled, as if that would make the tears go away. Her voice was thick when she spoke next. "And I blame myself and my therapist thinks that's stupid, but I don't know how not to." She shook her head again. "Kathy, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, what?"

"Tell Elliot that you saw me out here?"

Before Kathy could respond, Olivia had already walked away. 

 

Kathy went home, and after she got over the shock of what Olivia had said, she started to get mad. When Elliot got home that night--early again--Kathy cornered him in the kitchen. "Whatever's going on between you and me and between you and Olivia, if I'm the only one who can talk about feelings here, then we're all in trouble."

Elliot was confused. "Kath, what's this about?"

"Guess where I ran into Olivia today."

Elliot sighed, not in the mood for this game. "I don't know, where?"

"In front of her therapist's office. The therapist that she didn't want you to know about, until I told her that you haven't been sleeping. And you need to talk to her."

Elliot looked as broken as Olivia had--which Kathy considered an improvement over his recent indifference. And then he asked, "What did she say?" He tried to keep his voice light and even, but Kathy didn't know who he was trying to fool. 

Her anger boiled over. "No. I am not going to be your go-between. You talk to her." 

Kathy backed off, and Elliot understood that he'd been dismissed. 

The rest of the evening passed the way they all did, but Elliot did pick up Eli once. And he did ask Lizzie about her day, even if he didn't fully listen to her answer. That night, when Elliot got out of bed at his usual time (right around 2:15), Kathy heard him get out of bed and go quietly downstairs. Like he always did. 

But then she heard him talking softly on the phone. 

She didn't understand why, but suddenly tears were falling across her face into her pillow. She was glad when Eli woke up and started crying--it gave her a reason to hold someone tight. 

Elliot came back to bed that night and went to sleep. Kathy could tell, because she lay awake the rest of the night.


	5. Family

Soon, Elliot was back to himself, and Kathy and all the kids breathed a little easier. When he came home an hour late one day, he helped clean the kitchen. As he stood at the sink, Kathy came up behind him and hugged him. "I love you," she said. 

 

When life is going well, it goes by quickly. It seemed that no time had passed at all, but Elliot and Kathy found themselves moving their second daughter into her dorm.

When they got back home, Kathy closed the front door behind them and said, "And then there were three."

Elliot scoffed. "And then there were seventeen."

"What?"

"Years. I'm counting years. You're counting kids."

"Oh. That's...dismal."

But they both laughed. 

 

Elliot was glad things had settled down, both at home and at work. He still caught Olivia staring off into space at times--sometimes reacting oddly to unexpected things--but they were no longer crushed under the weight of things left unsaid. 

Everything would be okay.

Or so he thought, until he got summoned late one night to a crime scene that turned out to be his daughter's. 

It had been a blow to find Kathleen flying high on the playground, wearing nothing but a shower curtain. He was a cop--he knew the junkie affect when he saw it. 

But his own daughter. 

He managed to hold himself together, and he thought he deserved congratulations for his comportment. Until the next day, when he found Kathleen--passed out, overdosed, naked underneath a naked stranger--in an abandoned dry cleaners. 

No father could withstand that. He wanted to punch, fight, kill--anyone, everyone. He couldn't breathe. 

He tried to fix things on his own, but all of his plans backfired. Before he knew it, everyone was mad at him. 

 

Elliot came back to the precinct after the trial. Olivia could tell by his shoulders that it hadn't gone well. She asked, "What happened?"

"Kathleen's in Rikers." He shrugged and didn't look at any part of Olivia. "I need to be alone."

Before she could react properly, her phone rang. 

"Benson."

Kathy started talking with barely a greeting: "Olivia, hey. Did you hear about what happened in court?" 

Olivia sat down at her desk and glanced up the stairs--Elliot was already halfway to the crib.

"All Elliot said was that Kathleen is in Rikers."

"Well, it's true, but only because he took it upon himself to return the necklace to the Fosters."

"Oh." There wasn't much else to say about that.

"Olivia, can you get Elliot to talk to Bernadette again?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"He needs to try again. She just dotes on him--I think she needs to hear it from him, and he needs to hear that from you." 

"Who's Bernadette?"

"You know--Bernie? Elliot's mom?"

Olivia felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. "Elliot's...mom?"

"Ye--wait. You didn't know?"

"No! He--never--Why wouldn't he tell me?"

"Well, Bernie is...a little funny."

A little funny. Olivia didn't have a clue what that meant. Was that a repressed Catholic euphemism for "batshit"? She wasn't used to dealing with niceties: her father was a rapist; her mother was a drunk. What was "a little funny"? Where did that fit in the spectrum? Was it closer to "Should Have Been Committed A Long Time Ago" or closer to "Protestant"? 

"Kathy, what are you hoping to accomplish?"

"We need to prove that a mental disorder runs in the family, so we can get help for Kathleen!"

"Ah," was all she said in reply. So it was closer to "Should Have Been Committed," then. 

"Please...just ask him. I hate to put you in the middle like this, and I wouldn't except I can't think of another way."

Olivia agreed and hung up the phone. She didn't move from her desk--she just stared forward and played with a pen in her hands. (Pull off cap, turn pen around, put cap back on, pull off cap, turn pen around...)

While she was thusly engaged, Fin walked into the bullpen and took a seat at his desk. He took one look at Olivia and asked, "Who died?"

She looked at him for a few seconds, and then huffed out a breath. "It's funny you should ask, but the real question is, 'Who didn't die?'"

"Okay. So who didn't die?"

"Fin...did you have an unhappy childhood?"

He didn't seem thrown off by her apparent change of subject. He shrugged at her. "I wouldn't say it was unhappy. We were poor, my dad wasn't there, my mama was hard on me. But we had some good times."

"Did Munch have a bad childhood? Do you know?"

"I think Munch's worst problem growing up was trying to write on those stone tablets."

Olivia didn't crack a grin. Instead, she bit her lower lip and started playing with the pen again. 

Fin didn't press her; he just read a file while he waited her out. Finally she asked him, "Do you think it's your business what kind of childhood Munch had?"

"Liv, what are you on about?"

"Elliot's mom. She's still alive."

Fin furrowed his brow. "Did Elliot tell you she died?"

"No, of course not."

Fin shrugged. "Well, I'm pretty sure Munch's mom is dead, if that helps you at all."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Thanks, Fin. You've been a great help." 

Oddly enough, talking with Fin had made her ready to talk to Elliot. She got up from her desk and made her way to the crib.

He was lying in the bottom bunk, farthest from the door. He somehow knew that the phone call had been Kathy, and he somehow knew that Olivia was upset with him. 

She didn't mention Kathy's request right away--she had her own issues regarding her dearly beloved partner and his never-before-mentioned mother. No matter what Fin thought, Elliot had betrayed her. How could he--how could he? All the times she'd mentioned her crazy mother, and he never once commiserated. He'd always been silent. Like he couldn't even imagine such a terrible thing as a drunk mother. 

Like he didn't know. Like Olivia had such a freakish mother--such a freakish childhood. 

Like he'd never dealt with it to the point where he physically could talk about his past. 

She never managed to ask him to talk with his mother. By the time she had pulled herself together, Elliot had fallen apart. So she left him alone in the crib and used her finest detective skills to track down Bernadette Stabler herself. 

(Her motives weren't entirely altruistic. She wanted to see what Elliot had been hiding all those years.)

 

And so it was that Olivia met her partner's mother for the first time. The woman flatly refused to go in front of a judge, but Olivia saw a way around it.

Olivia knew she could pull strings at Rikers, and get Bernadette and Kathleen in a room so they could talk. She could do this for Elliot, and she would. On the drive to the prison, Bernadette focused her attention out the passenger window. She didn't speak. She didn't make any noise at all except an occasional sniffle.

Meanwhile, Olivia thought about her partner. She could see why Elliot had always placed so much more stock on nurture rather than nature. He must have always been trying to convince himself that he wasn't like his mom, just as Olivia tried to convince herself she wasn't like either one of her parents. 

She also realized how hard Kathleen's situation must be on him. Nurture or nature--it didn't matter either way. El would trace the blame back to himself. 

 

On the day that Kathleen's trial reconvened, Kathy got to court early. She hadn't talked to Elliot that morning--he'd called her the night before to say that he'd "caught a case" and would be out all night.

He could be such a coward. 

Kathy took a seat but couldn't sit still. Every time the door behind her opened, she turned around to see if it was Elliot. 

But Olivia got there before Elliot did. Kathy waved her over, and Olivia came and sat in the offered seat. "I'm glad you came," Kathy told her. 

"I wouldn't miss it. Listen, Kathy--Bernadette talked to Kathleen last night."

"I know. Kathleen is gonna plead guilty today." Kathy was proud of how even she was able to keep her voice. This was good news, after all--but it broke her heart just the same. Maddox--Kathleen's lawyer--had called her that morning with the news, and immediately after she'd hung up the phone, Kathy had started sobbing. 

But she was determined to not cry during the trial. She'd keep her tears private. 

"Thanks," Kathy said suddenly. "For talking to Elliot."

"Oh. No, I didn't. I couldn't--I went to see Bernadette instead." 

"You?"

Olivia nodded. 

Kathy was dumbfounded. But the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Olivia had a way of getting people to do what they needed to. If you gave her a lever and a place to stand, she could move the earth. 

The door behind them opened again. Kathy turned around and saw Elliot, but he must have seen her first because his focus was already intent on the opposite side of the courtroom. He slid in along the back wall and remained there, standing. She wondered if he was avoiding both of them. Could it be that Olivia was mad at him too--is that why she went to see Bernie herself rather than ask him to do it? 

She asked her, "Did you tell Elliot? About Bernie and Kathleen?"

"No, this is the first I've seen him."

"I haven't spoken with him either." 

And then court was called to order. Kathy's stomach dropped. She grabbed Olivia's hand and held on for dear life.

She didn't hear much of what happened. The phrases that jumped out at her were "Guilty, your Honor" and "I know I have a problem and I want to get help." And then the judge banged the gavel, Olivia squeezed Kathy's hand, and it was over. Kathy went to her baby girl and hugged her tight. 

When she looked around, Olivia was gone but Elliot still stood in the back, looking at her like he was asking permission. She nodded, and he came forward. He pulled Kathleen into a hug and looked over her head at Kathy. 

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, baby."

She couldn't tell who he was talking to, but it didn't matter--he was wrong. "Elliot, you always apologize for the wrong things. Come home tonight."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewatched this episode to write this, and I have to say, Ellen Burstyn's delivery of the line "Wellll! I was wearing it as a cocktail dress!" is perhaps the most awesome thing I've ever seen. If you have it handy, I would recommend that you go watch that part. Tee-hee. "Wellll! I was wearing it as a cocktail dress!" LOL. I wish I could work that into everyday conversations more often. :D


	6. Betrayal

Kathleen's sentence for criminal trespass was four weeks at an in-patient psychiatric hospital. Visiting hours were pretty liberal, and Kathy visited often. She tried to convince Elliot that it was important that he visit, too--Kathleen needed to know that she had his love and acceptance, and also that he didn't blame her. 

Elliot visited her once.

There were mornings when Kathy mentioned to Elliot that she was going to visit Kathleen that evening. "So try to get home in time and you can go with me, okay?" she told him. Every time, Elliot worked late. Moreover, he managed to get called in on a case two weekends in a row. So one evening when Elliot got home early, she sprang it on him: "Let's go visit Kathleen."

He made excuses. "When I come home from work, I just don't have the energy to go to a psych hospital, I'm sorry." She sighed and probably frowned at him, because he tried to placate her: "I'll stay home and watch Eli, and that way you and Kathleen can have some time together without the baby." 

But oddly, Eli was becoming an issue between them. Elliot never once said what he obviously wanted to say--that he wasn't sure he was Eli's father--at least not since Eli had been born. In fact, if Kathy thought about it, he never really said it before Eli had been born, either. 

It was almost like the thought was so horrible that Elliot couldn't even name it. 

So instead he said things like, "None of our other kids kept crying through the night like this. Even the twins started sleeping through the night after a few months."

Kathy replied, "El, your memory is failing. The twins didn't sleep through the night until they were eighteen months."

And then another time it was, "He doesn't look anything like me. He does look a lot like you, though."

She shot back, "When he frowns, he looks exactly like you." She tried to pass it off as a joke, but she knew she sounded bitter. She would rather him come out and accuse her of cheating on him and saddling him with another child. That way they could fight, she could refute it, and they'd be done. Surely that would be easier than dealing with his unending little comments. 

But as long as he was too much of a coward to say the words outright, she privately vowed to continue playing dumb. She wasn't going to play his game.

 

After Kathleen's four weeks were up, Kathy and Elliot planned to pick her up and bring her home. Kathleen was scheduled to resume classes at Hudson in the spring semester, and stay with her parents until then. 

Just before Elliot left for work that morning, Kathy reminded him: "One o'clock today--meet me there. I know the job can get busy sometimes, and if you can't make it, just call me, okay?"

"Sure, Kath. Sure."

"Just call me, alright?"

"I will."

 

It was three days before Kathy heard from Elliot again.

He didn't show up at the psychiatric hospital. He didn't call. By 1:30, she had to tell Kathleen that her father was on a case, but he wished he could be there. The lie was bitter on her tongue. 

She called him after they got home, but he didn't answer. He didn't come home that night, either. She called him three times the next day, and nothing. 

So she finally called Olivia. 

"Benson."

"Hi, Olivia. It's Kathy."

"Hey, Kathy, how are you?"

"I'm fine. Listen--I've been trying to get a hold of Elliot, but I haven't had any luck. Is he there?"

"Yeah, hang on." She heard Olivia cover up the phone and waited patiently. And then, "Kathy?"

"Yeah?"

"Sorry--we're all kind of busy with a case right now. Can he call you back?"

"Uh, sure." She hung up without saying goodbye. She stared at the disconnected phone in her hands for a moment, then said, "I could hear him talking in the background. And it's funny how you had to check with him before you could tell me that you were all 'busy on a case.' That is horseshit. That is horse shit."

"Mom?" Kathleen peered around the doorway. "Are you talking to me?"

Kathy sighed. "No, honey. I'm not talking to anybody."

"Is Dad coming home tonight?"

"I don't know, baby. He's really busy at work."

Kathleen nodded, and looked too wise. "I'm sorry, Mom."

"Don't be sorry, sweetie. It's okay--we're used to this, right?"

"The last time we got used to this, we left Dad."

"Kathleeeeeen. Don't worry about that, okay? Everything is gonna be okay." 

 

But Kathy couldn't deny that Kathleen was right. The last time things had gotten this screwed up, she had left Elliot, and it had made her feel much better--liberated, relieved. Like she had crawled out from under a rock that had been crushing her, and she was finally able to breathe again. 

So this time, when Olivia showed up on her doorstep, full of excuses for Elliot, something in her snapped. She reverted back to the thing that worked the last time: she packed her bags. 

(Had that really worked the last time? Why was she back here if it had?)

It didn't matter. Kathy wasn't in the mood to stop and think. Unfortunately, Olivia was following her around, trying to talk her out of it. Persistent. Like a mosquito. 

Packing wasn't soothing like she remembered--she felt angrier with each and every thing she shoved into her bag. And why was Olivia still talking? Why couldn't she just go away and leave Kathy alone? 

And what was she going to do with the kids? The twins were off at a dance, and they couldn't exactly come home to an empty house. And Kathleen...Kathy couldn't cart off with Kathleen like she was a child, but she wouldn't leave her alone, either. 

And Olivia kept making excuses for Elliot. And Kathy wanted to forgive him. This was her second marriage to the man, after all. She had known what she was getting. She had known who she was getting.

Hadn't she?

So she settled back in and settled down. Olivia finally left the house and left Kathy to her own thoughts. 

God, Kathy hated Olivia in that moment. How dare she take Elliot's side in all this--how dare she lie to try to save his sorry ass. Wasn't she supposed to be Kathy's friend? Didn't she hold Kathy's hand in court that day with Kathleen? Wasn't she Eli's godmother? Didn't she save Kathy's life and deliver her fifth child into the world? Didn't any of that trump the fact that she was Elliot's partner?

Kathy sat down on the bed heavily. Her thoughts clicked into place, and she understood her anger. 

She felt betrayed by Olivia, not Elliot. 

It was joyless discovery. What a great joke for God to play on her. During her first marriage to Elliot, she was jealous of Olivia and intolerant of the time he spent on the job. By the time she went back to Elliot, she made peace with his job and made friends with his partner.

And now, she found herself jealous of him. Why did Olivia pick him over Kathy? 

Was it possible that Olivia had done all of those things--saved her life, even--not for Kathy's sake, but for Elliot's? 

God. God. Of course she had done all of those things for Elliot. And when he asked her to lie for him, she did. Without even a second thought. 

Which left Kathy--oddly enough--even after all her personal growth and acceptance of her place in Elliot's life--back where she started. She still stood completely outside of the grand Elliot/Olivia circle. Somehow that partnership would topple everything she tried to build with either Olivia or Elliot. 

She couldn't win for losing. 

 

When Elliot finally did come home the next night with a few gunshot wounds--superficial--Kathy was ready to forgive him anything he was ready to confess. 

She teased him. "I think you got shot on purpose because you were afraid I'd hurt you more."

He shrugged with one shoulder. "Olivia told me how pissed you were, and I didn't want to take any chances."

This statement gave Kathy pause. Her curiosity got the better of her, so she asked, "What else did Olivia tell you?"

"Just that if I ever try that again, I'll be safer with the murderers than with you."

Huh. "Huh."

"Look, Kath. I know I need to be here more for Kathleen. I'm sorry. I'm just--I'm having a hard time facing it. You know that. Don't hold it against me."

"Don't hold it against your daughter."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"And you have other kids that need you, too." She meant to stop there, but she surprised herself by continuing. "Eli needs you."

"Kath..." 

But he didn't say anything else. Kathy had said what she needed to say, so she didn't prompt Elliot any further. They got ready for bed in mutual silence. 

They had already climbed into bed by the time Elliot spoke again. "I almost wish I wasn't his father."

This fired her up immediately. She turned on the light and looked him in the eye. "Eli is not an excuse for us to stay married. If you want out, then leave."

"No! I--" He exhaled and glared at her, obviously frustrated. "I love Eli--that's why I..."

He drifted off, but she didn't have any idea how he was going to complete his sentence. So she waited. 

"That's why I wish he was someone else's."

"Elliot...that's crazy."

He looked at her with his mouth all screwed up--like he was trying to smile. "That's pretty much my point."

He acted like he'd just told her everything. But if he had just laid out all his cards, she couldn't read them. "Elliot, what are you talking about?"

"It's my fault. Kathleen. I mean--Maureen is probably fine, but who knows about the twins. And Eli."

"Elliot, stop it. Listen to me: This is not your fault."

"Just because it wasn't on purpose doesn't mean--"

"Stop. Listen to me." She reached around and held both sides of his face in her hands, making sure he kept looking at her. "I met Bernadette before I married you. I knew who she was--I knew how she was--and I knew what it meant. I didn't care because you were a good man. You are a good man. You didn't mean to have the genes you had, but I meant to have children with you." She let go of his face and caressed his arms. "Don't blame yourself; I don't blame myself. We have good kids, Elliot. Five good kids who are becoming good adults. We did something right, do you hear me?"

He nodded, hesitated. Then he pulled her into a tight embrace.


	7. Set Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels all weird to me because not only am I dropping Kathy like a hot potato, I'm also no longer following the show. I'm not following the show because the show dropped Kathy like a hot potato. I'm dropping Kathy like a hot potato because I need to set this thing up. You follow? 
> 
> Yeah, I know. I don't really, either. I just assume it's necessary, because this is what I plotted out, and I can't change mid-stream here. I used to have the big picture, and luckily (?) back when I did, I wrote it down. 
> 
> Also, the part of me that's my mother considered changing the rating for this chapter. The part of me that's me thinks that the whole rating thing is bullshit, anyway. But just to warn you, there's some descriptions of violence here that I had to close my eyes to write. TV-14! TV-14! (Aside: Tamara Tunie has the WORST LINES in all of SVU. That poor woman.)

The next weekend was Eli's birthday. Eli's birthday, and the one-year anniversary of the car wreck that started Kathy's long journey of self-discovery that led down the same road she'd been on before. 

She wasn't much in the mood for a party, but a family meal and a cake seemed necessary.

She knew she should invite Olivia, but she couldn't bring herself to make the invitation personal. So this time, she made Elliot her messenger. Through him, Olivia agreed to lunch at the Stabler house on Saturday. 

Early Saturday morning, Elliot was called in to a case. "I'm sorry, Kath," he said.

"Don't worry about it. It's okay."

"But Olivia's not going to be able to be here either."

"Really, El. It's okay." And it was. 

 

The body of Lydia Pacheco was found in the East River Park by a couple of kids. She'd been stabbed multiple times. The cops on the scene had called in SVU because--as the young uniformed officer told the detectives when they arrived--"We couldn't actually tell if she was raped, because she's been stabbed so much. You know. Down there." The officer seemed quite happy to hand off responsibility for the scene to the hardened detectives who were used to saying the words he couldn't. He quickly walked away from the body.

Olivia and Elliot crouched down and inspected what was left of Lydia Pacheco. According to her ID, she was 24 years old and lived eight blocks from where her body was found. 

Olivia said, "Did you tell Kathy that I'm sorry I can't be there today?"

"Yeah. She understood. I hope some of these wounds were post-mortem."

"Seems awfully personal, either way. I'm thinking the perp knew her. I was looking forward to going--I hope Kathy knows that." 

"You could call her." Elliot patted the ground around the body. "This has to be a dump job. There's not nearly enough blood here for this to be our crime scene."

"Hopefully the doer drove her here in his own car, leaving plenty of evidence for us to find."

"We should be so lucky. Should we have a look at her apartment, maybe see if she has a husband or boyfriend?"

"Of course." Olivia stood up and looked around. "Shouldn't Warner be here by now?"

"She called me and said she was tied up but was on her way. Do you want to wait for her?"

"Nah, she'll call us if she finds anything. Hey, El--remind me that I have a present for Eli. Don't let me forget to give it to you."

 

No one was home at Lydia's apartment, but she had clearly lived there with a man--men's clothes were in the closet. There were no signs of struggle; this was not their crime scene. 

The building super didn't have much to say about his tenant, other than the fact that she was fairly new to the building. He didn't even know the name of the man who lived in the apartment, since only Lydia's name was on the lease. He did provide them with Lydia's mother's address and phone number. 

And so the detectives found themselves in Yesenia Herrera's apartment, delivering news of her daughter's death. "Oh my God," she said, and sat down heavily on her couch. 

Olivia pulled out her notepad and said, "Mrs. Herrera, I know this is difficult, but we need to ask a few questions. Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your daughter?"

"No...nobody." Her response lacked inflection. She was glassy-eyed.

"Who was Lydia living with?"

"Uh...her boyfriend, Enrique." 

Elliot's cell phone rang and he stepped out into the hall to take the call. Olivia continued, "How was her relationship with Enrique?"

"I don't know. I don't know him that well yet. She moved in with him so soon after she left Marcos."

"And when was that?"

"Just a few months ago. Back in the spring."

"Did she ever say anything to you about any troubles she was having with Enrique?"

She shook her head slowly and kept her eyes on Olivia. "No, never."

"What about with..." Olivia checked her notes. "Uh, Marcos?"

"Not really. Nothing like this."

"What does that mean?"

"Marcos had a bad temper. He and Lydia loved each other, but they were better apart than they were together." 

Olivia narrowed her eyes at Mrs. Herrera and asked, "Did he ever hurt Lydia?"

"No, he would never. They just fought a lot. Screaming, not punching."

"How long did Lydia live with Marcos?"

"Years. Two years? Three? I'm not sure."

 

As Elliot and Olivia left Mrs. Herrera's apartment, they filled each other in. Elliot said, "That was Warner. She puts time of death around 10:00 last night."

"Well, Lydia had a current live-in boyfriend of six months named Enrique Reveles, and an ex who she lived with for years before, named Marcos Acevedo. The mother didn't have a bad feeling about either one of them, although she did say that Marcos had a temper and that he fought with Lydia a lot."

"Who do you want to find first, Enrique the current or Marcos the ex?"

"I say Enrique the current. If his girlfriend's been dead since 10:00 last night, where is he today?"

"Sure. And Liv?"

"What?"

"Remember to give me Eli's present."

 

They found Enrique at his place of employment. He acted stunned when they told him about Lydia's death. He said that he had a fight with Lydia the night before, and that she left the apartment and didn't come back. He assumed she went to stay with her sister since she had done that before. He came into work this morning still thinking everything was fine. 

As the detectives walked away from the scene, Elliot stopped and turned around. "One last thing, Enrique. Where were you last night around 10:00?"

"I was home alone all night after Lydia left."

 

They checked Enrique's story with Lydia's sister. She told Olivia over the phone that Lydia had stayed with her once or twice before, but not last night. She said that Lydia hadn't even called the night before.

Olivia shared this information with Elliot and asked him, "What do you think?"

"I think if he had killed her, he probably would have done it in their own apartment. And unless Enrique is the best housekeeper in the world, no one was killed in that apartment last night."

"There's a whole city full of potential murder scenes, Elliot."

"I know, I know. But if he didn't kill her in their apartment, it means he planned it. Is that what you think happened?"

"I think it's possible that she left and he followed her wherever she went. He didn't necessarily plan it. I don't think we should rule him out. But let's look at Marcos the ex, shall we?"

 

But before they could begin to track him down, Melinda called them and said she had something for them. 

When they got to the lab, Elliot asked Warner, "What is it?" 

"Your vic was pregnant."

Olivia asked, "How far along was she?"

Warner shook her head. "Not very--about four to six weeks."

Olivia nodded. "Sounds like she might've just found out about the pregnancy."

Elliot agreed. "We might have just found our motive."

"Well, I hope you can find your perp just as easily. Whoever did this was sick. All of the stabs to her genital area were done pre-mortem; she was alive for the whole attack. I found bruises on her wrists. Your guy was strong enough to hold her wrists down with his left hand and stab her with his right."

"Cause of death?"

"Blood loss."

All three inhaled slowly--their small moment of silence for Lydia Pacheco. Then Olivia said, "Thanks, Melinda." And the detectives left to find Marcos the ex. 

 

On the drive over to Marcos's apartment, Olivia asked Elliot, "Do you ever think about quitting the unit?"

He glanced over at her quickly, his brow furrowed. "What? What brought that up?"

She shrugged. "Just wondering."

He turned the question around on her. "Do you? Think about quitting?"

She sighed and focused her gaze outside the car. "Yeah, I do. More and more here lately."

He was quiet for a moment. He asked, "Why are you thinking about it now?"

"Well, Elliot, a woman was just stabbed to death. Except she wasn't just stabbed to death, she was held down and raped with a knife and was alive for the whole thing. Rookie cops are practically throwing up at the sight of it, and you and I stand over her body and chit-chat about your kid's birthday party. I mean, for god's sake Elliot, this isn't even the first time we've seen someone murdered like this." 

Elliot didn't respond, so Olivia continued. "I just think we've gotten too jaded. We're just a little too used to this. And nobody expects to do sex crimes for more than a few years, anyway. Why are we still here?"

He looked at her with impossibly sad eyes. "I don't know, Olivia." His voice was rough and soft at the same time. 

"Do you think it's normal that we're used to all this?"

He shrugged and faced forward again. He said, "I'm not sure we're used to it. We just..."

"We're not surprised by any of it anymore." She considered carefully how to phrase what she wanted to say next. "My therapist thinks that you lose your baseline after working these cases for so many years. She thinks I've lost perspective on the scale of good and bad."

Elliot didn't say anything for a long time. Olivia was not tempted to fill the silence. She let it settle in around them. 

Finally, he asked, "Does she think that quitting the unit will help?"

"She thinks I need to do something to reclaim a sense of normalcy."

"Oh."

"I told her this job felt normal for me."

"What'd she say to that?"

"She didn't. I think she feels sorry for me." Elliot got quiet again, and this time Olivia filled the silence. "Maybe I should just quit therapy. I think that's a good way to reclaim normalcy."

Elliot didn't say anything. They had reached their destination. 

 

They found Marcos the ex home in his apartment. He, too, acted stunned at the news of Lydia's death. He said he hadn't seen Lydia in months. He didn't have any information to offer.

The detectives were headed out the door when Olivia stopped and turned around. "One last thing, Marcos. Where were you last night around 10:00?"

"I--uh...I was at the bar with my brother. Uh, I got home around midnight or one."

They checked Marcos's story with his brother Hector. Hector told them, "I was at the bar with Marcos. I got home around midnight or one."

Olivia and Elliot exchanged a glance. Suspects were suspicious when their alibis contradicted their story. Alibis were suspicious when they told the exact same story the exact same way. 

Olivia pressed him, "Which bar, Hector?"

Hector barely hesitated. "Butler's, down on Delancey."

And so the detectives went to Butler's, down on Delancey. The bar was closed, but the owner was on site and let them in. "I'm sorry--this place is a mess. What can I help you officers with today?"

"We were wondering if you know Marcos and Hector Acevedo."

"Oh, yeah. Those guys are regulars."

"Were they here last night?"

The bar owner answer immediately. "No."

"You sound pretty sure of that."

"Of course I am--we've been closed down since Tuesday. We're having problems renewing our liquor license--some goddamned paperwork mess."

Elliot and Olivia looked at each other, and the bar owner asked, "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"No--that will be all. Thank you!"

 

And so they brought Marcos the ex in to the station house for questioning. They filled Cragen in while they all watched Marcos stew in the interrogation room.

"Last I heard," the Captain told them as he jabbed his thumb toward the two-way, "This guy wasn't your prime suspect. You were focused on the other guy--Enrique. Did you clear him without telling me?"

Elliot spoke. "No, Cap. It's just that, during the course of our investigation, this guy lied to us about his alibi."

"But Enrique didn't have an alibi at all."

"No, he didn't."

"Do you think these two guys could have worked together?"

Olivia weighed in. "We don't have any reason to believe that they did."

Elliot got right to the point. "Look, Cap, if it's Enrique, it's Enrique, but right now I'm focused on Marcos because he's the one that we can prove lied to us."

"Fine," Cragen said. "Have at him."

Elliot said, "I want to go at him alone." He addressed Olivia: "Feel free to barge in if I'm getting nowhere."

Olivia nodded. Elliot entered the interrogation room but didn't sit down across from Marcos. Instead he started to pace in front of the two-way while Marcos kept glancing up at him nervously. 

After he'd gone back and forth a few times, Elliot started in. "You know how many pricks like you I've seen come through here over the years, trying to lie to me? I'm getting real sick of it."

Olivia had to hand it to Elliot. He could intimidate anyone, and do it quickly. Marcos nervously asked, "What?"

"I want the truth, Marcos. Where were you last night around 10:00? Simple question."

"I told you--I was with my brother at the bar!"

"Which bar, Marcos?"

"I don't know!"

"Oh, you're going to have to do a lot better than that. What did it look like? Where was it?"

"I don't know!"

"Was it Butler's? Hector said it was Butler's."

"It might have been--I don't know!"

"The problem is, Marcos, Butler's has been closed since Tuesday."

"Then Hector must have gotten it wrong!"

Elliot crossed his arms and stared at Marcos. Olivia began to wonder if it was time to make an appearance in the interrogation room--Marcos was too defensive to be intimidated into a confession. But Elliot seemed to realize this, too, because when he finally spoke again, he did so in a soft voice: "I'm trying to help you out, Marcos, but I can't do that if you're just going to keep lying to me. See, your problem is that you've dragged your brother into this mess. We could pick him up for providing a false alibi. Is that how you want this to go down?"

Marcos took several deep breaths, and Olivia nodded to herself outside the two-way. Elliot didn't need her in there. 

Marcos shook his head slowly. 

"Where were you last night, Marcos?"

"I...I was home alone. I just didn't want to tell you that because now you'll suspect me."

"Well, thanks to you, we do suspect you. You've already lied to us once--it's easy to do it again, right?"

"I swear, I was home all night last night. I was watching TV--th-th-that movie Titanic--that was on. I watched the whole damn thing--"

Outside of the two-way, Cragen whistled low. "This is the most pathetic son of a bitch I've ever seen. Whether he's telling the truth or not." Olivia smiled and agreed. 

Inside Interrogation, Elliot appeared to be losing his temper. He leaned in beside Marcos and started yelling again. "That's a worse story than your first one! Admit it! Last night, you hunted down Lydia and you stabbed her to death because you couldn't have her any other way!"

Marcos jumped away from Elliot, sideways out of his chair. "I would never hurt Lydia--I got no reason to!" He backed up against the wall and squeezed his eyes closed.

"Maybe you thought you were okay with her being with someone else, but then you found out she was pregnant."

Marcos's eyes snapped open and he stared at Elliot. "Lydia...was pregnant?"

Elliot took a few steps toward Marcos--not too close, but enough to be threatening. "Yeah, about five weeks along. Was it yours, Marcos?"

"No, it couldn't have been! I haven't been with Lydia since she moved out!"

Elliot nodded. "I think that's why it was so easy for you to kill that baby, Marcos." 

There was a moment--just a moment--when everything in the interrogation room went still. Or maybe it just seemed that way to Olivia, because suddenly everything seemed to move in slow motion. Marcos launched himself at Elliot--Elliot didn't even have time to bring his hands up--Marcos alone seemed immune to the slowing down that everything else was experiencing. He grabbed Elliot by the shirt and head butted him. 

Olivia ran into the room as quickly as she could, but Marcos was already pummeling Elliot when she got to him. Elliot wasn't putting up a very good fight. Olivia grabbed Marcos by his jacket and, with Cragen's help, dragged him off Elliot and cuffed him. With Marcos subdued, Olivia turned to Elliot. He was sitting at the table, head down and obviously struggling for breath. "El, you okay?" 

He didn't respond, but kept struggling for breath. Olivia couldn't get her hands on Elliot fast enough--she shouted to Cragen without turning around, "Call a bus!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you this, but my experience with NYC is limited to what I hear in Regina Spektor songs or can find on google maps. Google maps is a pretty good resource--I can look at the street view and everything! [nervous laugh.] You have to love pasty Midwesterners, right? Right?


	8. A Crowded Room

Eli's birthday party went well. Maureen showed up, and even stuck around to help with cleaning the kitchen. She delighted Kathy even more when she settled in at the kitchen table and didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. 

"God, Mom. All I can say is that you're lucky I didn't start having kids young. Eli could have nieces or nephews older than he is. That would have been so weird."

Kathy laughed and said, "That's not all that weird, you know."

Maureen continued, "I will tell you this: in my circle of friends, everyone is getting pestered by their parents about giving them grandbabies. Everyone except me, and I just feel like I should thank you and Dad for that."

Kathy really did laugh at Maureen now, and Kathleen pitched in to the conversation: "I was just worried that everyone would think that Eli was their grandkid--that Eli was really mine and we had one of those arrangements where they were raising him like he was their own so they could protect my honor."

"Maybe I should have taken Eli in and raised him as my own. To protect Mom's honor."

Kathleen laughed, but the turn of conversation made Kathy uneasy. 

"Hush, Maureen. When Eli gets older, I don't want him to hear you talking like that--like he was a problem that we all had to work around."

"Relax, Mom. I would never do that to the little guy."

"Besides," Kathleen said, "he'll probably figure it out on his own when he realizes that his closest siblings are fifteen years older than he is."

That did little to appease Kathy, but they did at least change the subject. They spent the whole afternoon together--just Kathy and all her kids--not doing anything exciting. They watched Titanic, which came from Lizzie's personal DVD collection. Dickie surprised them all by sticking around for the whole movie. ("You think this is the worst thing I've been subjected to, living with three sisters?" he asked the room in general. "Think again.")

They had moved on to playing cards when the phone rang. Kathleen answered, and passed the phone over to Kathy. "It's Liv," she said.

For some reason, Kathy's stomach dropped. Olivia never called, not even two weeks ago when Elliot had been shot twice. Kathy had only found out about that afterwards.

So with her stomach in her toes and her heart in her throat, Kathy took the phone from Kathleen's hands and walked into the next room.

"Hello?" she said.

"Kathy, Elliot is fine, he's going to be okay. But he's here at the hospital right now, and he'll probably be released sometime this evening. But I thought you should know."

Of all the emotions roiling under her skin, rage was the most easily accessible. So Kathy snipped, "So is he better than when he got shot and that's why you're calling? Or is he worse, and that's why you're calling?"

Olivia sighed into the phone. "Kathy, I'm really sorry about that. I--"

But Kathy cut her off. "Just tell me why my husband is in the hospital, please."

"Uh, a perp got the better of him and got in a few punches and kicks before we could get in there and stop him. El's got a broken nose and a couple of good black eyes--but that's just because of the nose. He had some trouble breathing for a little while, but the doctor seems to think that he's just got a couple of bruised ribs. We're waiting on the x-rays just to be sure."

Kathy just kept breathing in and out, trying to keep her hands from shaking, trying to keep her voice from shaking. She asked, "Why are you even calling me this time?" It sounded bitchy, even to her ears, but it was still a valid question. The only possible explanation she could think of was that Elliot had asked Olivia to call--the woman certainly never thought of Kathy for Kathy's sake, but she would do anything for Elliot.

But that explanation didn't make sense because Elliot would never ask Olivia to call home just because he was in the hospital. Olivia had to be going behind his back. 

Olivia said, "Look, I just thought you should know. And that you might want to come wait with him--we'll be up here a few more hours, at least."

"Which hospital?"

"Mercy General, room 511. And Kathy--"

"What?"

"I'm sorry about when Elliot was shot. I thought Captain Cragen would call, and he thought I would call...and I'm sorry."

As Kathy drove up to the hospital (of course she went up to the hospital--as soon as she got off the phone, she asked her older kids to watch Eli, grabbed her keys and left), she realized that Don usually did call. When did she start expecting Olivia to call instead?

When had Don?

 

Kathy entered room 511 to find Elliot sitting on the bed and Olivia sitting on the chair next to the bed. Both were staring blankly at the TV screen mounted high on the wall opposite the bed. Elliot had two spectacular black eyes.

When Elliot saw Kathy, he frowned. "Aw, Kath, did Cragen call you?"

Kathy frowned back. "No, Olivia did."

Elliot scoffed. "You didn't need to come, you know. This is nothing serious."

Kathy started to draw herself up for a fight, but Olivia beat her to it. "El, this is exactly what I was talking about. You have no idea where the line between 'serious' and 'nothing serious' is." 

"Liv, trust me: this is nothing serious."

And then the two of them were yelling at each other.

"You couldn't breathe when you were in there!"

"I'm fine!"

"You came over here in a bus!"

"They don't even think I have a broken rib! And you wanna say that I've been at this job too long and that's why I'm not freaking out about this?!"

"All I'm saying is that normal people call their spouses when they end up in the hospital unexpectedly!"

Elliot got dangerously quiet. "And I'm saying that you're overreacting because you're worried about under reacting. That's not better, Liv, and it's not normal, either."

Kathy had seen them fight before--it seemed like every time she went to see Elliot at the precinct, the two of them were fighting. But usually it was about a case. This fight was much more personal. The whole room tilted in the awkward silence that followed. The space was entirely too small for all three people, and possibly too small for just two of them. Kathy cleared her throat, and Olivia got the point. 

"I'm sorry, Kath. I was just going to get some more coffee. Did you want some?"

"Sure, if you don't mind." Kathy didn't care about the coffee at all, but she was glad Olivia was leaving the room. She wanted to talk to Elliot about what just happened, to find out what they were arguing about. Frankly, she wanted to take sides, and she wasn't yet sure whose side to take. 

"Do you want any cream or sugar or anything?"

"No, black is fine." 

Olivia made her way toward the door and Kathy moved closer to Elliot. She was about to ask him about the fight in a low voice when he suddenly sat up in bed and pushed her to the side, trying to look behind her. Offended, she whirled around to see what could possibly draw Elliot's attention.

At first, all she could see was Olivia backing into the room. And then she saw a young man on the other side of Olivia, just inside the doorway. Olivia's stance was odd--her hands were in front of her: placating, warding. Her back was rigid. Kathy almost asked a stupid question when she saw what Elliot and Olivia must have seen right away.

The young man had a gun.


	9. Partnership

Kathy's ears started buzzing, and she felt a pressure building in her forehead. She realized that she was about to faint. She didn't dare sit down--she didn't want to draw attention to herself--so she tried to slow her breathing and calm down. 

Just calm the fuck down.

"Hector, what are you doing?" Olivia was asking the nice young man. Meanwhile, the nice young man kept swinging his gun around, pointing it at each of them in turn. 

Wait a minute. Hector? Olivia knew this guy?

While Hector seemed indecisive about where to aim his weapon, Elliot stood up carefully and raised his hands in front of himself, mimicking Olivia's pose. Alarmed by the movement, Hector settled on pointing his weapon at Elliot. He said, "I just want you stupid cops to leave my brother alone!"

Of course. Olivia and Elliot both knew this guy. 

Olivia spoke. "Hector, Marcos is--"

But Hector didn't let her finish. He aimed his gun at her forehead and took a menacing step toward her. "You need to understand something: Marcos would never hurt Lydia! Never. He loved her. And now he's locked up! Explain that to me!"

Olivia backed up slightly, still holding her hands in front of her. Elliot said, "Hector, Marcos is in the lockup right now because he sent me to the hospital. They haven't charged him with Lydia's murder."

Hector pivoted the gun back to Elliot and yelled, "But you're going to!" The moment Hector turned away from her, Olivia made a miniscule movement toward him. Hector noticed and spun back to her. 

He was panting, volatile. Kathy could tell that he was out of his league and didn't have a plan. It scared the crap out of her. He could do anything--anything.

But Olivia had a voice that could soothe anybody. "Hector...I have a brother, too, you know. And I would do anything for him."

"Yeah? Well, anyone ever try to lock him up for something he didn't do?"

Olivia blinked slowly and worked her jaw. "Yeah. And I hated it. But you know the worst part, Hector? There was a part of me that thought he might be guilty. And when I found out he wasn't, I felt like I didn't even deserve a brother. Not if I didn't believe him." 

Hector started shaking, and Kathy thought that Hector was about to give in and give up the gun. But when he spoke, he choked on his words. "You don't know anything, you stupid bitch." The gun, still pointed at Olivia, shook wildly in Hector's trembling hands. 

Olivia backed up slightly while Elliot moved forward. Even in her panic, Kathy marveled at the dance Elliot and Olivia were in. As one backed up, the other stepped in--leaving the net distance from Hector the same. It was a graceful pas de deux. 

Elliot said, "Hector, I'm sorry about your brother. But he's locked up right now because he made some bad decisions. Don't make bad decisions like Marcos did, Hector. That won't help him. Don't do it." 

Hector still had his gun trained on Olivia, but he was focused on Elliot. Olivia started speaking and took a slow step forward. "Hector, we know you just want someone to listen to you. It's a terrible feeling when the people in charge are ignoring you." She took another step forward; she could easily reach his gun and take it from him. But what if he fired? Kathy couldn't stand to watch, but couldn't stand to look away either. 

"We're listening to you, Hector. Just give me the gun." Olivia already had her hand on Hector's. Kathy didn't even see when she had moved it there.

Hector sagged down onto the floor, and Olivia handed the gun off the Elliot. (How had she grabbed it that quickly?) Olivia cuffed the guy (had she always been holding the handcuffs?) while Elliot removed the clip from the gun. Then he grabbed his cell phone and turned his back to the room to make his phone call, and Olivia walked over to the bed and hit the call button for the nurses. 

Kathy hadn't moved since Hector stepped into the room. She was still frozen in place, watching Elliot and Olivia buzz around her. Olivia touched her arm lightly and looked her in the eye. "Are you okay, Kath?"

"...Yeah..."

Olivia nodded, and led her over to the chair. Kathy sat down and eyed Hector, slumped on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back, crying.

A nurse walked in the room, speaking before she'd taken in the scene. "Can I help you with...Oh, wow. What's going on here?"

"This man is the brother of the guy who beat up my partner today. Some officers will be up here shortly to pick him up, but in the meantime, could you get some security guards to take him out of the room?"

"Uh, sure?" The bemused nurse walked out of the room. 

Elliot snapped his phone shut and turned around to face them. "Shit," he said.

"What?" Olivia asked.

Elliot frowned at her. "Well, on the scale of 'fine' to 'not fine,' I think this deserves a 'shit.'" He shrugged. 

Olivia nodded. "Though clearly, you're in no position to judge."

Elliot agreed. "No perspective," he said.

"My brother is innocent," Hector told them. 

The detectives looked at Hector with something like curiosity in their expressions. And then, in one motion, as if they had agreed on it, Elliot and Olivia sat down heavily on the hospital bed. 

When the security guards came into the room, everyone stayed seated where they were. The uniformed men exchanged a few words with Elliot and Olivia and then left, taking Hector with them. 

Three people were left in the room, and Kathy still had the odd feeling that it was one person too many. 

"I just don't understand," she said. 

"What don't you understand?" Elliot said. 

"Why didn't you hit the button right when he came in? To call the nurses? They could have helped."

Olivia shook her head. "In situations like that, Kathy...the more, the messier."

It didn't strike Kathy until later that Olivia had answered for Elliot's motives. 

 

The scene at the hospital made Kathy unbearably sad. She never did ask Elliot what he and Olivia had been fighting over. She wondered how many situations like that the two of them had been in. Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Enough for them to have a routine, anyway. 

They had a partnership--a union. And it was something that Kathy could never break into. It was something that Kathy had no right breaking into. Her husband's life--and Olivia's life--depended on it. 

Elliot and Olivia had a fight right in front of her, and she had no idea what it was about. They dealt with a life-and-death situation like it was normal for them, and then somehow--even as she was watching and not understanding--they apologized and forgave each other for whatever they were fighting about earlier. 

Kathy just knew what she saw. She didn't know any of the reasons behind it, but Elliot and Olivia did. And Kathy knew what it all meant: the meanings were none of her business. 

In the end, Elliot might love Kathy, and Elliot might have sex exclusively with Kathy. But he would always have a relationship with another woman. And even though Kathy might be friends with the other woman, she would always stand outside of that relationship, no matter how close she was with either of them. When the three of them were together, she was the third wheel. 

But this time, she had walked into a relationship with Elliot with open eyes. She had chosen this. She had to remind herself of that. But somehow, back when she made her choice, she had forgotten how much it could hurt.

 

When she got home from the hospital, she hugged Maureen tight. "Thanks for staying here all day, baby."

Maureen sensed that something was wrong, and didn't pull away from the hug. "No prob. I love you, Mom."

Kathy sniffed and didn't let go. "I love you too, sweetie. I hope Eli wasn't too much trouble while I was gone."

"No, Mom. He was perfect." 

As Kathy cried quietly on her daughter's shoulder, Maureen repeated, "He was perfect."


End file.
